Dailey Brewing Goes All Grain!

Last Sunday (April Fool's Day, hopefully NOT ironically) - Dailey Brewing Co. went All Grain! Finally...

We chose an Oktoberfest Lager and we're calling it Old Dusseldorf (another homage to our favorite 80's show Magnum P.I.). Its happily fermenting now in our special lagering fridge - a cool 50 degrees. We'll pull it out in about a week to let it rest at room temperature for three days. That should help eliminate the buttery taste that may develop during fermentation. Then we'll transfer it to the secondary, where it will sit until...September. Yes, we have to wait five more months before we'll know if it turned out.

Meantime...I'm thinking of a Cocoa Blonde for summer. Ever have one?

Enjoy the pictures below and happy spring!

 Jason pouring the grain into the mash tun

 Every brewery needs a brewery dog!

 Sparging the mash

 Ahh... the boil. This part smells amazing!

 The spent grain

Transferring the wort through the counter flow wort chiller (cools it) and into the primary fermenting carboy. It's an art, really.

Donna's a Brewer!

It's official: I'm a brewer! While Jason has taken the lead on all the beer we've brewed to date, I took a major step forward last week and brewed my first beer, a brown ale. I've decided to call it "Bear Down Brown", in honor of my beloved Chicago Bears (despite the mess of a season we ended up having). Here's the label - what do you think?




















I wanted to make this beer similar to Upslope's Brown Ale so we added brown sugar to the last 10 minutes of the boil. That increased the alcohol level, but we're still around 5.6%. It's in secondary fermentation right now and we should be kegging it next weekend, just in time for my siblings to taste it when they come out to ski!